If the Republican opposition
to the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau and its architect, Elizabeth Warren,
didn't appear absurdly churlish before, Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R-NC) performance
at a CFPB oversight hearing in the House this week has firmly established their
hollow obstructionism as nothing more than political theater. The chairman of
the Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on TARP and Financial Services came
across like a petulant child when he became aware of a scheduling conflict with
Warren, his primary witness, who had to depart the hearing after an hour of
questioning for another appointment.

Warren argued that the committee's staff had changed
the scheduled hearing time at the last minute, and she had done her best to
accommodate their requested changes. McHenry accused her of lying on the record
and later stated that Warren had a "blatant
sense of entitlement" in her demeanor towards the Congress.
He also accused her of exceeding her authority in her role as a special
advisor, a baseless claim that Wall
Street Journal columnist David Weidner strongly refuted:

Moreover, the
scheduling brouhaha is beside the point. Mr. McHenry's challenge-and the wider
Republican opposition to Ms. Warren-is about authority.

On that point, there
isn't really anything to debate. Ms. Warren is not only within her right to
participate in the mortgage settlement talks, she is obliged to by law. The
Dodd-Frank Act spells it out. It's in Title X, Sections 1001 to 1100H.

McHenry and Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell
Issa (R-CA) have since been waging an unusually hostile and sophomoric Twitter
campaign against Warren. Their tweets describe her as trying to "walk
out"
of the hearing, having "complete
disregard" for congressional oversight, and attempting to hide
information from taxpayers.

McHenry went so far as to post a sarcastic
"thank you" to his critics and posted a link
to Warren's personal schedule, implying that she was lying when she said she had
other appointments to attend. (Warren's posted schedule
clearly hasn't been updated since at least March 28, because everything after
is completely blank; it's unlikely Warren has had no appointments in two months.)

The Oversight
Committee has even reportedly resorted to deleting critical comments
about their treatment of Warren from their Facebook page - and there have been
many such comments, as that page and McHenry's have been flooded
with comments supporting Warren and denouncing her Republican
attackers.

McHenry's attempts to paint Warren as "entitle[d]"
are not new, and they mirror sustainedright-wingattacks
on Warren as power-hungry, elitist or arrogant.
Republican disdain for Warren, who may be chosen by President Obama as the new
"sheriff" of Wall Street, belies their legislative priorities — to protect the
banks and financial institutions that keep them in office with campaign contributions.

Republican efforts to create this misleading public
caricature of Warren are particularly silly given her background. Warren is a
professor and ex-Sunday School teacher from Oklahoma. She has
a law degree and a wealth of experience in bankruptcy law, consumer protection
issues, and on Wall Street. She looks to John Wesley, founder of the Methodist
sect of Christianity, for inspiration.
She is the daughter of a janitor
and is a huge fan of the NBA's Houston
Rockets. She maintains zero balances
on her credit cards.

In other words, Warren is the quintessential local girl made good.
Through a combination of hard work and sharp intellect, she has landed a
position that allows her to help set up an agency tasked with protecting other
average Americans from the dense and sometimes deceptive practices of the large
banks and credit card companies who hold our financial well-being in their cuff-linked
hands.

The contrast between
the truth — Warren's modest roots and character and her broad legal authority
as an advisor to the CFPB — and the Republican straw man depicting Warren as an
arrogant elitist blinded by ambition, is stark and illustrates once again just
how out of touch Republicans on the
Oversight Committee are with the American people.